Global Policy Forum

By Ian Black

No matter how the UN security council is reformed, only one outcome - continued gridlock - seems likely.

Old hands at the UN like to tell the old joke about the Italian ambassador who is annoyed that his country is being ignored in the debate about reforming the security council to better reflect contemporary global realities. Germany and Japan are both making rapid progress towards the world's top table, complains the envoy - preferably in an exaggerated comic opera accent - so why not us? After all, the punchline goes: "We lost the war too."

The joke makes a serious point: 60 years after the defeat of fascism, the five permanent members of the security council - known in diplomatic shorthand as the P5 - are the victors in that conflict. Of these, the US is indisputably the most powerful country on the planet. China is the most populous country in the world, and one of its fastest growing economies.

However, today's Russia is a pale shadow of its former Soviet self. Britain and France are medium-sized European powers who happen to possess - as do the other three members of this exclusive club - the legally-sanctioned nuclear weapons they acquired during or after the second world war. All five wield the vetoes that can, in theory, make or break momentous international decisions.

Italy's claim, it has to be said, was never compelling. So the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, this summer proposed that the EU should get its own UN seat - an eminently sensible way of representing 25 member states and 450 million people, even if his transparent motive was to prevent the Germans from getting a seat for themselves.

If any single European country deserves a place in the UN sun, it is Germany - reunited, and with a population of 82 million, it is the continent's largest country and economy, and a provider of peacekeeping forces from Macedonia to Afghanistan. Past sensitivities, however, are never far away, and some - for example the Poles - detect disturbing signs of the return of the sort of self-assertion by Berlin that went out of fashion for decades after 1945. Britain and France are enthusiastic supporters of the German claim - although cynics say, reasonably enough, that is only because they want to deflect pressure for a common EU seat. The security council, FO mandarins say, is to be enlarged, not reformed - a subtle but crucial difference.

The bigger point, though, is this: what justification is there for a change that brings in more wealthy western countries but still excludes Africa, Latin America and the entire Muslim world, and that would leave the north-south divide as wide as ever before?

Last month's debate in the UN general assembly, at which all 191 member countries had a go at thrashing out the issue, went some way towards sorting out these competing claims. After years of lobbying, Japan won a two-year stint in one of the security council's 10 rotating seats, hoping to prove that it deserves that coveted permanent seat when the reform process is accelerated next year. Momentum seems assured by the fact that Japan, Germany, Brazil and India - collectively known as the A4 - have now formally agreed to support each other's candidacies for permanent seats.

Japan has gone further than any of the others in proving its credentials. It is heavily involved in key international issues, including the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa, and is a big contributor to UN coffers. It has also pledged to focus on the so-called "new threats and new challenges", including the prevention of transnational terrorism and weapons proliferation - preoccupations for everyone in the post September 11 world.

Japanese progress has, however, whetted the appetites of other wannabees, triggering strong opposition - China and South Korea are both against Japan's bid. India has an excellent case as the world's largest democracy but, not surprisingly, it is opposed by Pakistan, which fears India would scuttle its proposals on Kashmir. Argentina and Mexico both want to prevent Brazil from getting in to represent Latin America. Africa, which was still largely ruled by European colonial powers when the UN was set up in 1945, could legitimately be represented by South Africa, Nigeria or Egypt, although post-apartheid South Africa has by far the best credentials.

Simply expanding the membership of the council however, would actually prove to be a fairly minor change - doodling in the margins of the global narrative, as one expert put it. No reform makes sense without looking back at the council's recent history, and most notably its failures over Kosovo and Iraq, both cases in which irreconcilable splits at the top meant that military action was taken without the formal sanction of the whole body, undermining its overall legitimacy.

Iraq, of course, was far worse because of the limited nature of support for the US-led invasion, whereas the entire Nato alliance - including France and Germany - backed action against Slobodan Milosevic. The war against Saddam Hussein showed, all too cruelly, how paralysis during the cold war has been superseded by a unilaterally induced paralysis, the product of insuperable US hegemony. Even a more ambitious UN reform would be unlikely to change this.

Yet Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, is still determined to try. He is currently awaiting the recommendations of the cumbersomely named High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, which is tasked with finding ways to make multilateralism work. Its conclusions, which are due out in December, may not be good news for those aspiring to get a place round that famous horseshoe-shaped table on New York's East River.

According to diplomatic gossip, the panel's favourite option is for seven of eight semi-permanent members to serve a four or five-year term, plus one new rotating two-year seat, resulting in a total UN security council of 24. Simply adding a few more seats and vetoes to the current model is likely to result only in further gridlock. So disappointment seems guaranteed, and not just for those frustrated Italians.

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